March 2019 Digital Marketing News Updates – Facebook Privacy Check-Up, Third Party Posting for Instagram Videos, and Twitter’s New Desktop Interface
Krista Neher
Mar 15 2019
Facebook News Updates
Facebook Watch Changing Programming – Facebook watch is currently only available in the US, and Facebook hasn’t been pushing advertisers towards the Watch mid-roll ads. In a new announcement they have cut 2/3 of their content, suggesting they need to rethink their strategy.
New Remove Message Feature – If you accidentally send a message that you want to take back you can now use the “remove message” feature to recall something you posted to a message – even a group.
Instagram Rolls out In-App Business Profiles – These look similar to Google Business Profiles, and showcase relevant information on businesses (hours, phone number, etc.) to make it easier for people to connect with business information.
IGTV Previews added into Feed – Instagram TV has been off to a slow start. In an effort to drive more views of IGTV (presumably) they are now showing previews in the main feed. It will be interesting to see how this drives more views of IGTV content.
Twitter News Updates
Twitter Results – Twitter revenues are up (more than expected) due to strong advertising revenues, but the monthly active user numbers have dropped even more than they were expected to.
Twitter Cuts Access to Spammy Apps – Twitter has removed API access to apps that rapidly follow and unfollow accounts and encourage other spammy behavior in an effort to make the platform more relevant.
Snapchat News
Revenue up but New Users Flat – Snapchat results reports show that revenue and revenue per user are up, but the platform isn’t growing users – user numbers are flat.
Pinterest News
Pinterest Launches New Shopping Features – Pinterest announced a number of new features to make shopping from Pins even easier for users. Features like shop by brand, catalog and personal recommendations shows Pinterest aims to be your shopping platform.
LinkedIn News Updates
Linkedin Launches New Pages Features – These include content suggestions (see what your audience is most interested in), advanced analytics (finally) and a Pages Toolkit with guides.
New Groups Features – LinkedIn launched a number of new features as they aim to grow groups. The new features include notifications, seeing more groups content in the newsfeed, cover photos and new admin tools.
LinkedIn Debuts LinkedIn Live – It is limited in users and may open up to more beta users soon. This matches the push from LinkedIn towards video (and copying Facebook).
Google Introduces Shoppable Ads from Images – In a new ad unit users can shop directly from interactive image ads. These ads will show in image search results and display “sponsored”.
Google Results – Revenue up 22% shows continued strong advertising growth driven by YouTube which is aiming to gain share of the performance marketing budgets.
Digital ad Spend will Surpass Traditional – It is finally here – digital spending will surpass traditional led by Google and Facebook. It may be worth checking how your spending measures up to industry averages.
Industry News and Research
Amazon Launches Reward Portal – Amazon will now make it easier for businesses to reward loyal customers. For example you can send an amazon product to people who listed to your podcast or completed another action and Amazon will handle the logistics.